Amid a Florida divorce, you may feel pressure to concede on issues to conclude the proceedings more expeditiously. However, when it comes to parenting issues, this may prove detrimental to your rights.
A parenting plan is one of the most crucial documents in a divorce. Before crafting your version of the document and compromising on any terms, you should become familiar with the elements you want to ensure become part of the document.
What Is a Parenting Plan?
When you have children and you are divorcing, both the legal and physical aspects of child custody are included in the divorce proceedings. Florida courts prefer parents share both legal and physical custody of children if it proves to be in the children’s best interests. Legal custody provides each parent with the right to decide on important decisions including their children’s education, medical care, and religious practices. Physical custody typically comes down to the schedule that parents work out. The latter is what makes up the central portion of the parenting plan.
What Protections Does a Parenting Plan Afford?
A parenting plan allows you and your spouse to define the type of co-parenting relationship you want. It should set out the exact schedule of visitation or parenting time. You should set the time with your children based on their age requirements, with younger children possibly needing more time with one parent than the other, and your availability to adhere to the schedule.
However, you should not give up a percentage of time sharing in your parenting plan. Doing this may make it harder to modify things as circumstances change or evolve. Since time sharing also impacts child support calculation in Florida, you may want to consider whether the other parent is trying to influence that portion of your divorce.
A parenting plan gives you a legal basis for spending time with your children and ensuring you have the authority to direct their care. An experienced family law attorney can assist with questions or concerns you may have.
